Connecting good films to each other, and to good people

Double feature: Here’s a fun new game to play – which Best Picture Oscar winner about ego, aging, and Hollywood’s incursion into the New York theater world am I talking about: “Birdman” or “All About Eve”? Continue reading →

Double feature: Of course I am neither the first, nor will I be the last, to recommend “Boyhood.” But what I may be able to add is the observation that its exploration of time and existence is a uniquely American one.

Double feature: “What Maisie Knew” and “About a Boy” are two low-key literary adaptations examining what, and how, two only children understand and absorb upheaval in their domestic lives. (Seasonally appropriate bonus points to “About a Boy” for easing viewers into the holiday season.)

Double feature: When “Frances Ha” came out, many reviewers hung their claims for its distinction on the fact that its heroine was a young woman, and yet its narrative had essentially nothing to do with that young woman’s love life. Presumably, this separated it from the pile of marriage-plot driven romantic comedies with women in the lead, a pile in which “Bridget Jones’s Diary” stands honorably near the top.

Double feature: These two films are essentially mirror images of each other. Their plots are the same – a worldly schemer attempts a romantic con on a wealthy but naive amateur biologist; a series of witty, swanky hijinks ensue. But in “A New Leaf” the “mark” is female, whereas “The Lady Eve” reverses the gender assignment –and that makes all the difference.

Double feature: A double feature of epics that will take the better part of a day to watch, the pairing of “Gandhi” and “Black Narcissus” provides ample fodder for considerations of dominion, overcoming, and the good/evil within us (i.e. whether one or both are inherent, and how each has the potential to conquer the other, if only temporarily).

Double feature: The perfect pairing for the (unofficial) last weekend of summer – “Before Midnight” and “Claire’s Knee.”Why? It’s not just that both are set, either all or in part, during summer’s end. It’s that, in a larger sense, the two films are structured around, and brim over with, markers of time.